


skip this fic

by Anonymous



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Meta, Suicide, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26446393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dorian and Solas are trapped in the Inquisitor’s time loop.If you can describe it better than that, then maybe we should trade places.
Kudos: 7
Collections: Anonymous





	skip this fic

"It's not right," she says. "I have to go back."

Solas wonders how long he's going to let this go on for. 

She's avoiding him, it's become clear. The way she turns in place, like an acrobat spinning on her toe, performing her body for a world out of focus in her eyes. She turns and turns and it skews into a blur of color and nothingness and paste.

Still she says, "It's not right. I have to go back."

He despises her a little. He can't see the point.

It's clear she anticipates the conclusion. It has already happened, in that sense. She knows the shape of it; it has already struck her. This turning and returning changes nothing. A little thing here, a little thing there. A hand moves at a slightly different angle but it still reaches forward in the end. It takes. It beckons.

No one benefits.

None of them know it's happening except for her and him, they cannot use the time for anything more than what they've already used it for, what they always use it for. And she only sees the looming inevitability. She has seen the present, known it, and worn it down to dust. There is nothing here for her to find.

Still, she turns.

And Solas waits. He is always waiting. He is always patient. He makes an art of it - of saying the same things in a slightly different tone. In tilting his head one way, then the other. Of fostering hope in the same breath he fosters doubt.

"It's not right," she says. "I have to go back."

To what? To where? When will it be right?

He does not rush her. There is no point. It is all inevitable. He must only suffer the turning until the propulsion runs out and the top clatters to a rest on the floor and the acrobat, panting and exhausted, collapses into a dizzy, inelegant bow, blood in her shoe.

He could reach out and snap her leg, but why?

He doesn't feel that same need to meddle with the flow of things. Only the direction they flow in. His work in that regard is nearly done.

He waits. He waits.

"It's not right. I have to go back."

And then, at once, it does change.

"Solas, my friend," the Tevinter mage says, one hand on the desk, his knees bent in an artful lean, "I do believe we're trapped in a time loop."

Solas glances up at him, revealing nothing except curiosity, which is real.

"What makes you say that?" he asks, as if they're speaking about the weather.

The Tevinter mage quirks a smile, like he's in on a joke no one else is. Or rather, like he knows that everyone else is in on a joke that he's been kept out of, and he's crafted himself a rival. The rival, he knows, and no one else knows, is much better.

"It's just a feeling I get," he says.

Dorian Pavus is a liar, Solas thinks. He feels no hypocrisy in this assessment.

"And what feeling is that?" he asks.

Dorian looks briefly serious. The lines beneath his eyes crinkle. He looks older than he really is.

"Boredom," he says.

Then she's saying, "This isn't right. I have to go back."

And Dorian is ripped away.

But whatever wound he's opened refuses to close. It bleeds in thick uninterrupted streams that seep across the turning blurred out world and stain it all a deep, unearthly red.

"Something will have to be done eventually, you know," Dorian says, sitting in Solas's chair, refusing to be ignored. "You can't keep pretending it's not happening."

"I'm not the one pretending," Solas says, caught off guard.

"No?" Dorian asks. "Well then, my mistake."

He doesn't move from the chair, even as she bumbles in, pauses, confused.

"That's not where you go," she says to him. "This is wrong."

"Is it?" Dorian asks. "If you say it is, Inquisitor, then it must be so. Very well. Position me. Hand me my script and I shall follow your stage directions. Where would you have me?"

Her eyes are wide and fearful. Haven't you been tearing the world apart again and again to change it? And now, confronted by change, you balk and become afraid. Her spindly little fingers dance up to the chain around her neck, and then away. She turns - but it is her body turning - and walks away.

Dorian looks at Solas.

"There you have it," he says. "Progress at last."

I wanted to tell you that I know all this already. I know how the story goes. You are trying so hard to be loved. You are trying to make the shambling wreck of your body into something that is capable of being loved. You use your fingers to dig into it and pull, push, trying to rearrange the bones, the muscles, the flesh, but it won't budge. So you set it aside. You lay it on the ground and walk away. You abandon the body and close your eyes and dream a little dream of

_sweet dreams 'til sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you, but in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me_

What is to be done with the shell? It cannot be escaped. She is trying. Over and over again and you laugh and laugh and hate her for it because it's so impossible and arrogant and disgusting and selfish and mortal like watching a worm writhing in the dirt like watching a fish lie gasping on the shore, flopping madly, breathing hard, desperate to be the first of its kind to sprout legs and walk on land.

She wants to be loved, and the more she wants to be loved, the more she is hated, so she turns and scrambles to take it all back, to scrape it all back inside of herself even as more and more spills out between her fingers and the gaps she's torn in her own skin.

Aren't you a pretty pair? Do you love her yet? Do you love yourself? Do you love anything at all or in your mad dash to numb yourself to the sting of not being loved have you forgotten how to do anything but sit and watch and hate and turn and wait for something in the dark to reach out and

Love you? Hate you so much that you are shocked into loving yourself? Or just to open its eyes and see that ugly face of yours for what it really is?

But at least Dorian is there, and he's always good for a laugh.

He's taken to rearranging the books. There's nothing else to do. At first Solas doesn't realize what he's doing, and then he doesn't care. Then he walks one day (one turn) around the endless loop on the second floor, running his fingers along the spines, and notices the theme.

The first letter of each book on the shelf at waist height spells out a naughty rhyme.

"There's hardly anything else to do," Dorian says, when confronted. "Or there are a million things to do, but what's the point, when there are no consequences? That's always the best part of misbehaving, you know."

"There are always consequences," Solas says. "Even when you're alone. You suffer them yourself."

"Yes," Dorian says, thrown lazily over his chair, legs dangling at an uncomfortable but elegant angle. "But what's the point in suffering when there's no one around to appreciate how well I do it?"

"There is no point to suffering," Solas says, "other than to suffer."

Dorian reaches out and grabs Solas the way he never would if things had not gone so tumbling into themselves stuck-unstuck. He fists the front of his tunic roughly and drags him down, so that Solas stumbles, knees bent, into Dorian's space.

"That's where you're wrong, you little liar," Dorian hisses. "That's the lie you tell yourself. You do suffer just like I do, you lying thing, only you pretend you don't. But it is - it is a performance, an act, a display, one you've worked out so nicely. And when you look in the mirror you feel very sorry for yourself, don't you? You're no better than I am. Does that bother you? You're no better than her."

He lets go and Solas sags back and doesn't say a word.

What did you expect, you lying thing? Did you want to be entertained, or did you want to be seen? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which

She turns.

“How did you become aware?” Solas asks, because at last there’s no point in not asking.

“Who knows,” Dorian says.

He’s up on the battlements, up on the stone rail, balancing. He walks with his arms spread wide, watching his feet as he steps.

“It just happened,” he says. “Maybe there wasn’t a reason. Maybe there never is. Maybe things just happen and then we invent reasons later on, to make ourselves feel better about it. What about you? How did you become aware?”

He was always aware. He cannot close his eyes. Even in his dreams, he is awake.

“If you fall, you’ll die,” Solas says.

“I’ll snap my pretty neck,” Dorian agrees. “And then I’ll wake up tomorrow, this morning, as if it never happened at all.” He raises one leg, balances on one foot, raises himself up on his toes. “Do you think she’ll cry if I do? The Inquisitor?”

“Yes,” Solas says.

“Will you?” Dorian asks.

“Probably not,” Solas says.

“Will you tell me later,” Dorian says, “how beautiful I looked, sprawled out in the snow? Will you tell me how wonderful I looked down there, broken on the rocks?”

“I will,” Solas says.

Dorian closes his eyes and falls backward, like a crippled, malformed bird, wings whipping uselessly against the air, plummeting down over the edge slowly, slowly, quickly toward the bottom of the cliff. Solas watches him go, committing every detail to memory. 

Someone screams.

The Inquisitor does cry. She sobs her little heart out, confused and distraught and panicking and broken, like a window shattered and the wind rattling the pieces, trying to pick them up and put them back. Useless and incapable. For a moment Solas thinks, with some wonder, that this is it. She’ll let it go on. Dorian will lie down there forever, dead and empty and gone.

Then she remembers herself enough to turn.

“You made a lovely corpse,” Solas tells Dorian.

“I knew I would,” Dorian says proudly. “You made a lovely murderer.”

“I didn’t push you,” Solas says. “You jumped.”

“Liar,” Dorian says. “Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


I want to tell you a story. Is that okay?

It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything. It’s just a story. You can believe or disbelieve that if you want. You can stop reading and go do something else. There are lots of things that you can do. Sometimes I think about it myself - standing up and walking away. Going into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and then coming back to - what? Drink my coffee, I suppose. Open the blinds and stare out at the smoke. Close the blinds. Take a shower and put on a bra and wonder why but feel, somehow, the necessity of it, as if there’s some secret to living that’s hiding in the skeleton of physical things. As if to put on a bra is proof of being alive in some way that sitting and typing isn’t.

What I mean to say is - you can do whatever you want. I want to tell you a story.

Once upon a time in a made up world there were two made up men and a made up girl who was somehow more made up than the others. All three of them were very sad, but in a make believe sort of way. They were sad in a way that was very simple. At any point in time they could stop being sad, and start being happy, which real people can never do. Even when you stop being sad, some shard of it still remains inside of you. 

There is no artful way to talk about sadness. It’s just a thing that is. You wake up and you live with it. You laugh at a joke or go on a long, peaceful walk or you listen to a stranger in the next room over humming a song and you don’t feel sad every time but you were sad once and the memory of that lingers underneath until it stops being a memory and is once again a fact.

Everything inside of you will one day be the sum of who you are.

Does that make you sad? Maybe it’s not true.

Maybe people aren’t just stacks of things, of chemicals and electricity, of memories and facts. Maybe people are something else, too. Maybe they are a suggestion, an idea. Maybe they are - I could get a cup of coffee. I could open the blinds and stare out at the smoke. I could put on a bra, even though the idea repulses me, even though the word repulses me, even though the repulsion repulses me, even though the world repulses me. I could, if I wanted to. And maybe I do. Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe that’s all people are. It has nothing to do with what you’ve felt or what you’ve done. Who you’ve hurt or how hurt you’ve been yourself. We’re all just maybes, floating around in the sunlight, or the dark.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.”

“If that makes you feel better,” Solas says.

“It doesn’t,” Dorian says.

“I’m sorry,” Solas says.

“Liar,” Dorian says again, and then is done, because there are only so many times you can say a thing before getting tired, even if it’s true.

They’re going to kiss at the end of this. Does that surprise you? I don’t know why it would. I already decided that, a long time ago. You can skip to the end and see for yourself if you like. I can tell you right now how it’s going to happen. This is the line:

‘And then Dorian leans in and then Solas leans in and then the space between them is gone and all the little hurts and turnings that hang suspended inside that space are banished by the press, by the merging, by the presence of two people in one place, like a great, hulking ship cutting through ice, not at all elegant or lovely but steady and trembling and necessary, as many ugly things are necessary, as many necessary things become beautiful by the fact of being needed, as if being wanted alone - even for just a moment, even if it’s just pretend - is enough, and maybe maybe maybe

Maybe it is.’

There you are. That’s how it ends.

Did I ruin it? What have I ruined? I won’t even describe it, just the space around it, like that optical illusion of the faces and the vase. If you press your fingers up against the nothingness you can almost make out the shape.

Where were we? What do you want to hear next?

You need to relax. You already know how this is going to go.

(She turns.)

“Qarinus is on a little spit of land, surrounded by water almost on all sides,” Dorian says. “No matter where you are in the city, you can hear the ocean, crashing up against the rocks. No matter what street you walk down, you can smell it, can taste its salt, can feel the pressure in the air, heavy with its nearness. Even when you can’t see it, it’s always there. At night sometimes I would lie awake in the heat - it gets very hot and humid during the monsoon season - just listening to it and thinking about nothing. Even when you’re sleeping, it’s there. The same wave crashing against the same rocks over and over again, wearing it down to nothing. There aren’t any proper beaches, which I always thought was a shame. I look very good on a beach.”

“You look very good everywhere,” Solas says.

“Thank you,” Dorian says. “There aren’t any proper beaches, though, which makes it a bad place for melancholy strolling and thinking. You can try it on the docks but they’re so full of people living their lives without a care for what’s in your head that it ruins the mood. It’s impossible to really get caught up in your own misery when there’s some rough looking deckhand just there, coiling a rope around his arm, doing a job that has nothing to do with you in so many endless, countless ways - he works for himself, he works for his employer, his employer works to deliver goods to merchants, the merchants sell goods to customers, the customers go home with their sack of sugar and pour a little into their tea cup and stir and tap the spoon on the side to shake the droplets off and sip and - yes that is just sweet enough - and never even stop to imagine that you were standing there beside that sip, a million miles away, a million years ago, thinking and being miserable. Anyway, it’s impossible.

“That’s where I first got into the habit of not strolling on beaches and being melancholy. It’s where I grew up. Instead, I would lie in bed and be melancholy, listening to the ocean, thinking what a sight I must make, sprawled out on top of the sheets, eyes distant and lips parted and nowhere near myself at all but out on the crest of some wave moments before it breaks, and then being sent flying back to some new wave, rising higher and higher, but still doomed, in the exact same way. What an exquisite way to suffer, I thought. So if my father wants to blame somebody for the way I ended up, falling so exquisitely into so many different beds, he need look no further than himself, for raising me in Qarinus where there are no beaches to stroll on. Sometimes even now I still close my eyes and hate how silent it is here. There are no waves. There are no beaches. I can’t quite work out the proper method. Well, other than drinking. That one’s a universal language.”

“Do you miss it, then?” Solas asks. “Qarinus?

“Good heavens, no,” Dorian says. “I’ve never been. And isn’t that a relief? You know, after all, what happened to me there.”

“I always hated that part,” Solas confesses.

“So did I,” Dorian says.

“It seemed so cruel,” Solas says. “Not because it happened. Cruel things are happening all the time, to everybody, both real and imagined. But it’s the sort of cruel thing you ought to be able to respond to, in your own way, with your own words. You ought to be able to hide it away, if you want, and say nothing at all. You ought to be able to put a cup over it like a spider - ”

“Like a spider,” Dorian nods.

“ - and take it outside,” Solas finishes. “Pass the wine.”

Dorian passes the wine.

“And what about you?” he asks. “Do you have any spiders?”

“Probably,” Solas says. “I can’t recall. I’ve taken them all outside.”

“Lucky you,” Dorian says.

“Oh, look,” Solas says. “Here comes the Inquisitor.”

She finds them in the gazebo, in the garden, sharing a bottle of wine. She stands on the steps, leaning her small shoulder against the carved wooden column, halfway in the shadow they have come to share. She is crying. She is always crying, though, like no one has bothered to tell her that eventually you have to run out. The well must eventually run dry. She digs down deep and finds new springs and waters the earth beneath her feet with every labored step.

“Tell me what to do,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. I tried so hard to get it all right. I only wanted everyone to be happy, to be happy, but no matter what I do I get it wrong. I keep trying, over and over, but it’s never right. What am I supposed to do? How do I get it right? Tell me what to do.”

Solas passes her the bottle of wine.

She holds it in her hands and looks down at it. She runs her thumb over the label, reading the printed letters - the vintage, the grape, the vineyard. She likes wine. It’s one of her favorite drinks. That was always something she secretly delighted in, because it sounds like a character trait, and she has so few of those. ‘Likes wine.’ Dorian likes wine. It almost sounds like it means something. It almost sounds like something they have in common, that they share. But it’s not, really. It’s not anything.

She takes a drink.

“It doesn’t taste like anything,” she says. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

“That’s your fault,” Dorian says. “Not ours.”

“I hate you,” she says.

“No,” he says. “You hate that I hate you.”

She cries. She cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and then - stupid little thing that she is - she turns.

“At least,” Dorian says to Solas, “the bottle is full again. It’s a nice wine.”

_birds singing in the sycamore trees - dream a little dream of me_

_while i’m alone and as blue as can be - dream a little dream of me_

_i’m longing to linger ‘til dawn, dear - just saying this:_

Are you still there?

I got another cup of coffee. I looked through the blinds at the smoke. I haven’t yet decided about the bra.

I listened to Doris Day singing Dream a Little Dream of Me. One and a half times. I restarted it halfway through. I’m always restarting things halfway through.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever gotten part way through a thing and realized you hadn’t done it right? So you went back and started over, all over, as if you hadn’t done it before? But you had. The unfinished thing was left there, unfinished, hanging, if only in your own memory, in your own mind. It left a little imprint of itself, another thing on the stack. There are no redos. There are always consequences. Even when you are alone, by yourself. Even if it’s just you who suffers them.

Are you still there?

Has that ever happened to you?

~~I think I’m a man.~~

~~I think I’m supposed to be a man.~~

~~I think I want to be a man, but I’m not.~~

Maybe it’s just that I find what I am so detestable that I would rather be anything else.

I think I’ll put on the bra.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, when I’m alone in this room.

Are you still there?

Do you want to know the truth?

Originally it was only Solas here, stuck in this spinning, stuck with the Inquisitor, watching and waiting and hating and doing nothing. But it seemed so lonely and sad. That’s why I put Dorian here, too. I didn’t want to be alone. I don’t think it helped.

I know what you’re thinking - if you can do that, then why don’t you make everyone else aware, too? You can fix it. It’s up to you.

But I can’t. I can’t. A person can only do so much. I can’t wake them up. I can’t make the Inquisitor stop. I can’t make them happy. I only keep making everything worse. Every line, every word. It gets worse.

They’re still going to kiss. I already told you they would. I even showed you the line where they do. So they have to, now, even if it all feels very foolish and strange and wrong. Even if you can see through it, see what it really is, see straight to the heart of the trick, the sham. I can’t undo it. I can’t take it back. I am living with the consequences.

I am learning to live with the consequences, even when I’m alone.

Eventually we’re all alone with ourselves. Eventually we’re all the sum of everything inside of us, the consequences. But maybe we’re also a maybe. Maybe maybe maybe.

Maybe there are questions I don’t have to answer today. Maybe there are questions I don’t have to ask. Does that make it better? Does that make it worse?

But I promised you a story. I was going to tell you a story.

Here’s how it goes:

I’ll put Dorian in the library. I’ll hand him his script. I’ll put Solas in the rotunda. I won’t give him a script. It will all be very natural for him, and he’ll know that for Dorian it’s fake. He’s reading lines. He’s going through the motions. I told him to do it, so he will. But Solas is an old thing, a liar. He already knew that none of this is real. He’s known the whole time. He’s always been awake.

“Well,” Dorian says, leaning over the railing. “What are you going to do?”

He wants an answer.

Solas looks up. He sets his paints aside. He’s painted the same picture a thousand times by now, the same strokes, the same lines and curves and colors. It comes out different every time. It amounts to the same thing, in the end.

“What do you mean, what am I going to do?” he asks.

“You don’t know?” Dorian asks.

“I don’t,” Solas says.

He remembers how Dorian looked, falling from the battlements. He memorized the sight. He memorized each detail.

“You don’t know what I mean or you don’t know what you’re going to do?” Dorian asks.

“Either,” Solas says. “Both.”

Liar. I already told you what you’re going to do.

“In that case,” Dorian says, “I have some suggestions. If you’re amenable.” He tilts his head, catches the light, lips quirked in a teasing smile.

Solas climbs the stairs. He walks around the library loop, running his fingers along the spines of each book. He is thinking about spiders, scuttling in the dark. He is thinking about how hard it will be, to stop performing suffering for himself, but that he would like to. He would like to stop. He is thinking about Qarinus. He is thinking about waves, breaking on the rocks, the infinite crash of the ocean that won’t for anything be slowed or stopped. It is not comforting. It is immense.

“Did I tell you what a lovely corpse you made?” he asks, coming at last to stand before Dorian.

“Yes, you did,” Dorian says. “I make a lovely everything.”

“You do,” Solas says. “But a particularly lovely corpse. Something about it seemed to imply that you had once been alive.”

“Aren’t I?” Dorian asks.

“No,” Solas says.

“Ah,” Dorian says. “That’s a shame.”

It is.

And then.

But you already read that line. I already told you how it goes: And then they kiss.

Around them, the world turns.

Are you still there?

I think I’ll go put on the bra.

After that - the wine.


End file.
